i'm still waiting for some type of holistic approach to crowd noise, but that is bigger than the band director, i guess
Pretty much sums up Coach... And after what the aggies did to us at LosuR in 1978 or '79, I will always hate aggie and any true Sooners fan should always hate aggie because of it. ****ers from some dorm threw water buckets and water balloons on us as we marched in. Ruined several horns and uniforms.
Yes, KSU was parents' day. I sat in front of the band (next to the drum major, actually) and they were godawful. They can't play together to save their lives, which is partly due to Mr. Britt moving the drumline to the FRONT of the band in the stands instead of back by the brass where they're supposed to be. The brass sounds awful--out of sync, shrill, blasty...just painful. Nobody knows how to play a damn phrase anymore. I swear there's a break after every three notes. Mr. Britt's suggestion to get the brass to play in sync with them was to have the drumline play a little quieter at the beginning. REALLY!? Really, Mr. Britt, when the Brass can't hear the drumline the solution is for the drums to be QUIETER? How the **** does THAT make sense? Not to mention the band has no sense of time--they rushed every eighth note in all of "Oklahoma." I think the final tempo was a good 20 bpm faster than the start. And can we talk about the lack of enthusiasm? It's like they're asleep on their feet. Whenever the cameras show the band, I cringe. They look like they don't want to be there, aren't paying attention, couldn't care less about the game. It's embarassing. This band is the OU marching band but it is not the Pride of Oklahoma. It hasn't been since Coach left, and it may never be again. Thank god Britt is leaving.
I would have never been able to tell. Thank goodness we have a real musician listening for this stuff, hehe
Change is needed but I hope they don't mess with the traditional pre-game entry. I've been watching that for 40years.
The biggest thing I noticed against KSU was they didn't play very much. Tons of stuff was played over the loudspeakers like Enter Sandman, Crazy Train, Welcome to the Jungle, and others typical stuff. SoonerDude and I noticed during the 3rd quarter that we didn't think they had played yet, and purposefully listened for the remainder of the quarter. Didn't play ONCE.
If you are close enough to ANY college marching band, the individual instruments sound crappy. Later today, during half-time, listen to the close-up lead ins to commercials. They usually are near a band member blaring away. It ALWAYS sounds like carp. But back off a little, and it sounds ok. And yes, 5,890 Boomer Sooners is becoming a joke among our opponents' fans.
I must admit I've been out of the loop/scuttlebutt on the band thing, because the announcement of Britt's departure was a shocker to me. What's been downright saddening is the obvious dropoff of the band since Thrailkill's departure. I don't know much about band music, to be sure, but the one thing I have noticed that has changed is the way Boomer Sooner has been played. There used to be this fabulously obnoxious energy in the way it was played in the mid-late 70's through the 90's, but then evolved into an almost staccato, precise playing of the notes, but without nearly as much heart. Some Sooner fans think I'm nuts, but I was vindicated when I heard a radio commercial about a year ago where Boomer Sooner was played in the background, and darned if it wasn't of those fleeting older versions, with that great, brassy tempo. I emailed a guy at that station if he could send me a copy of it, described what I was looking for, and he even knew what I meant. And that recording is now my cell ringtone. Point of that story is that even though I was never a Pride member when I was a student, I surely appreciate the impact they've had, and how that influence has clearly waned (for whatever reason) over the last several years. Here's hoping someone with at least a fraction of Thrailkill's energy, exuberance, and flat-out orneriness takes over and gets the Pride back where it belongs.
The band was pretty good tonight, but it's sad that it took him leaving to do something neat like the gangam dance. The band was getting down after the game also.
well, they have done that sort of thing with LMFAO and Thriller in the last few years it was kinda cool to see him march off with the seniors
I check this thread and find, much to my surprise, that no one has posted since December. I thought there would be at least some discussion here, especially with all the hoopla about the supposed changes coming down the pike. Maybe Mr. Britt wasn't so bad after all.
Because: 1. No one REALLY cares, we just have this thread to bitch about something. 2. There's only 10 of us left since the board got hacked. 3. Did I mention that no one really GAF? 4. I don't even live in Oklahoma anymore...in fact, when's hockey season start? But yah, Brian Britt sucked. My hawt wife has two sons from her first marriage who were both in the Pride...and they HATED him.
